Twisted Times: Son of Man (Twisted Times Trilogy Book 1) (22 page)

Sometime later that month, the Boeing 747 Cessna twin aisle airplane floated noiselessly in the cloudless azure African sky. Down below life seemed fuzzy and ethereal with the monumental towers of human architect and industrialization transforming to tiny shiny specks of sand pebbles on the white shores of the world’s oceans.

Traffic and the shiny ribbons of infrastructure turned to nothingness by the ascend of the machine in to the skies above, and the idea of wingless creatures flying suspended thousands of feet from the crust by something as pantomime as turbo fan powered planes was completely insane and entirely ludicrous to Susan. Although she had ridden in them countless times she had not trusted, even homed, the idea of flying. It was all out of sheer men’s pride and ingenuity to try to fly when God would have just given them wings if He wanted them to fly.

The plane had levelled and was flying over twenty thousand feet, miles and miles away from the pollution down there, and with every passing moment it seemed as though altitude was making her mind more lucid to think in crystal clarity.

A glance outside the window gave her one of the most fascinating scenes. It was romantically picturesque with the white clouds she saw as she walked down the streets of Nairobi and jogged along the promenades surrounding her with the gaiety she never thought they actually possessed. The azure of the sky above mesmerized her since, despite the ascend, the sky was still too far away. She wondered why on earth would that be, and she got the answer from the memory of one of her father’s pulpit lines that it’s all ‘God’s wonderful works’. That was when she still went to his church.

She saw the green of the vegetation below, the table looking mountains tops, rocks and dry land, deep valleys and gorges, and the whole of the crust below crawl slowly and smoothly with the plane, and she wondered whether the other more than seven hundred passengers aboard the Boeing 747 Cessna were having the same thoughts.

It was the first time she was flying alone and the thought of it seemed rather preposterous. All along she had been accustomed to having her beau along with her, but now she knew that it was time she learnt to face all that by herself. That’s why she had completely stood her ground when her father suggested that she wait they go together for he was having a crucial meeting with T.D. Jakes in the US in two weeks’ time. Although she would still have been on time she decided to go earlier to familiarize herself with her new environment. For the first time, though bored to death and alone, she tried to push all those thoughts away and enjoy the flight.

Eight hours later the Boeing 747 landed at the J.F. Kennedy International Airport in New York, and an hour later she was at her cousin’s house, who was a law student at the New York’s Law School, at the New York’s Midtown Manhattan. She had another three weeks before she reported to the New York’s University Mount Sinai School of Medicine.

Urbanas parked his spiced-up sports car outside the Central Police station exactly at 10:30 a.m. It was only a few minutes before when he had received the call from their friend in the police and by the sound of his voice over the phone it was evident that something was terribly wrong somewhere or was falling apart and the centre could not hold.

He found that the CID boss had already left a message for him to be shown direct to his office the minute he arrived.

The CID boss was waiting for him, and from his noncommittal handshake was the confirmation of Urbanas’s doubts – the CID man was troubled. After the custom pleasantries and light remarks the CID boss went straight to the point.

“I have received an anonymous call from a woman. She wants to meet me. She claims to have concrete information about the murder of the Imperial Media Services journalist, Carol Mwangi.”

“Is that why you called me here? She’s been long dead and...”

“That’s not why I called you. I called you here because you made a mistake. You were seen.”

“By who? How? When?” Urbanas was sure that they were not followed and that he had left no trace of him at the dead journalist’s house. Now this was a stunner.

“How many people know about this?”

“Two and now you makes it three.”

“What about Sam?”

“He is not around. He went to US to take care of business there.”

An expectant ghost of silence danced in front of them, the smell of what it meant to all of them foul in the air around. After all that long?

Urbanas stood to go and before he reached for the door the police man called him.

“The rendezvous is at the August 7 Memorial Park near the M-Pesa shop at 5:30p.m. She’ll be in Ray-Bans, a Panama hat, and a yellow dress.”

Urbanas said nothing. He knew what he had to do.

“You already know her, this time make sure you don’t leave your trace all over.”

2010;

It was my first time to stay in a foreign country for a long time and still with no hope of leaving. It was three months since I became an Israeli residing at one of the wealthiest suburbia of Tel Aviv, Ramat Aviv district. I was, for once, at peace with myself and I was enjoying whatever fate had in store for me.

My house was a semidetached deluxe two-bedroom house with a mansard roof of 1930s Bauhaus architecture. It had a touch of the traditional architecture mostly found in the Neve Tzedek neighbourhood. Complete with a modern kitchen, a study and a gymnasium, it provided a nice and beautiful home for me, a place so quiet that I was for once so happy that I could live an uninterrupted life.

I spent most of my time knowing more about Israel. Visits to museums and libraries taught me more about that biblical land, and when I could not be idle any longer I got something to keep me busy. Thanks to one of my business friends whom I had serendipitously met in Kenya and become friends. 

I stayed for three months in solitude nursing my homesickness; forlorn mourning my separation with the woman I loved with all my heart, though we talked almost daily. She had already gone to the US for her master’s degree and whenever possible we kept in touch.

I still kept contact with my BHC’s OFI guys who were still alive. They told me that some progress was being made on the cases we had left. There was a new cop in town who was intend on doing what the police were supposed to do.

The new Inspector General of police, under the new constitution which was promulgated in August 2010, was incorruptible, untouchable because the constitution protected him. He brought police reforms and his efforts were bearing fruit. If his success and reform rate was anything to go by we could go back to our jobs in a better environment. For the record, I was not ready to go back to that job, that’s what I told my friends.

As time went by I prayed and hoped that one day justice would be served, but if that day happened to come in my lifetime I would not evade the guillotine. In some strange convoluted way I felt that one day I would pay for my past sins and crimes.

My life was going on well except that I had this foreboding that I was losing grip on something, somebody actually – Susan.

It was a religious duty for us to keep in touch when I arrived in Israel; late night calls over the transatlantic distance that separated us, online chats on Skype or Facebook, lots and lots of e-mails of which I later suspected she used to mark them trash alongside other things that kept her alive in me. It was like a statutory requirement for me to have her passport size colour photograph in my wallet, her image on the key ring, the ring on my finger, the medallion I wore around my neck and her comely face as the wallpaper of my phone, and the background of my laptop and desktop. All my rooms, the four of them – bedroom, parlour, study and kitchen had her photos hung on the walls. I went ahead to have her images printed on my underpants, vests and T-shirts. I always wondered whether she was going gaga like me.

She was ever my guardian angel, my cloud up in the sky and I was sure she heard my voice when I called her. I knew she was there as though she had the rare gift of ubiquity albeit inaccessible and invisible. 

I felt dejected when just suddenly all our communication stopped. I could no longer find her on her cell phone; she stopped replying my e-mails and messages that I send her via Facebook. This got me damn worried.  There was no activity on her Skype page, and I feared the worst, you know, death never announces its coming.

It was after five months of trying and fretting myself when I decided to accept what she was silently trying to tell me. Or had she died? It was a possibility I considered instead of getting worked up on her silence, putting the blame on her for going mute on me and thinking that she was cheating on me, or avoiding me.

However, everything screamed Susan was avoiding me. It did not make sense to me then, the possible drama that could be going on. In my court she stood accused of meeting some nigger or a spoilt white boy. The moment this thought crept into my mind I bit my lower lip, livid. I dispelled the last trace of her from my mind and decided to forget all about her. That’s when I accepted what my Israeli friend had offered me long before I left Kenya.

Hanan Ben Shalom was a well accomplished businessman with a string of businesses in both Tel Aviv and Tel Aviv-Yaffo. He owned the IBM software company in Tel Aviv and a number of chain stores at the Central Tel Aviv; courtesy of his billionaire father and formerly a member of Israeli government.

I met Hanan at an East Africa trade fair that had been organized and sponsored by UniStar Kenya and Standard Chartered Bank in Kenya. As one of the shareholders and board of directors of Standard Chartered Bank International, he had to be there. That was four years earlier, and we became friends. I did not tell him when I arrived in Israel; when he knew that I had stayed for quite some time he was almost mad at me for not telling him I was in town.

He gave me a job at one of his malls, but I will never forgive him for what happened to me later. Were it not for his insistence I would not have been in the mess that I found myself in later. Were it not for the trust he bore me he could not have given me the managerial duties of his Aleana Holdings shopping mall near Ramat Aviv. It was here, though I tried as much as I could not to, my life became an amorous story, another twisted chapter in my life. To make matters worse he gave me a well-furnished residential house at his father’s home. The greatest mistake.

It was my second week as the manager Aleana Holdings that changed everything. I had not yet moved in to the house Hanan had told me to move to, I was still considering turning the offer down.

I pulled up outside Aleana Building thirty minutes early to prepare for the day. After doing the customary inspections I retreated to my office. From time to time I would escape from the office and feast my eyes on the activity in the building, not out of sense of duty but to get a lull from the lethargy of sitting in the office.

It was during one of these interludes that the story of my fall from grace started. How I wished later I did not take that break.

I saw this girl. I couldn’t see her face. Just the side and back of her head, a cascade of tar black hair slicked back falling slightly short of the lumber region on a modelesque body. A little ear stuck out of the mane of the waterfall of her hair at a jaunty angle. It was a fleeting glimpse only, but something about the angle and carriage of that head made me lose my breath.

The girl was pushing a shopping trolley and walking away from where I was, her back to me. She had an impossibly but magnificently narrow waist. A cheeky little rump switched from side to side oscillating in a romantically smooth side to side symphony making her flared miniskirt swing rhythmically as she moved. Her calves were perfectly formed, her legs the sexiest I had ever seen and her ankles were slim and neat. She went round the corner with a last devilish twitch of her bottom as though she knew I was watching her, leaving me with no option than determination to have a look at her face.

I found her at the cashier’s desk. She was insanely serious with herself, and I hoped to God that she had a backside like heaven and a face like hell because if she turned to be what I thought, then she was in problem. Or
there
was
the
problem.

I watched her surreptitiously pay her bill, get her balance, grab her shopping bag after getting that PR-but-rather-larger-than-life warm smile from the cashier.

I must do this,
I told myself.

I followed her out and I saw the cashier, a bundle of exquisite beauty, give me a what-do-you-think-you-are-doing stare. I knew she liked me and I was planning to ask her out one of these days but it no longer mattered now. Maybe I had got what I wanted at last.

   The girl walked to a red McLaren F7 cabriolet that stood cool and grand in the parking lot. What a marvellous beauty – backside so far. Then she did it. She turned as she opened the passenger door to put her shopping. That’s when she committed the crime. She stole away my breath. No violence. She just popped in to my heart, drew her handgun of dainty beauty and got whatever was in the vault. No shots were fired. I was not going to let her get away with it, though.

She was tall, presumably a few inches below my five-ten, her legs willow wands and her waist like a River Nile reed. And then the eighth wonder of the world – her face. She had the face of the Madonna, and her complexion was a blend of salve and flower petals, too perfect for a Jew.

It was her complexion that had gotten the better of me. Even though she had the tiniest indication of Semitic features, she was redeemed from insipid vacuity by the tar black hair, her gelatinous intelligent and determined eyes that were black orbs matching with the hair, her cupid bow mouth, and sexy lips devoid of make-up.

Completing the picture was the area just below her slender neck. Her chest was perfectly formed, two nipples protruding from a pair of perky breasts the shape of pears almost gaping shyly in an incongruous way. Apart from the matching pink top that she wore to cover her more or less flat chest and the sunnies that she put on, something I deduced she did before driving, she mesmerized me. She still had my breath and I had to get it back. I couldn’t let her get away with it.

I fought the instant awe of her beauty and launched an insidious but determined march towards her.

“Excuse me, beautiful,” I said, walking briskly to get her before she got her beautiful butt in the car.

I did not make it, but before she could close the door I got it. What an audacious yet silly thing to do. I got it all from her face. The look, the scrutiny and the what-do-you-think-you-are-doing look got me off balance and momentarily I was lost for words. Before I could form something in my womanizing mind she said something that made me not just disappointed but embarrassed with myself.

“Oh, have we met before? I must have forgotten, forgive me,” she said, slamming the door to my face.

And with that she drove away.